As the Covid19 pandemic unleashed a global lockdown, wiping out concerts, festivals, shutting down nightclubs and live music venues across the world, musicians known and unknown were forced to find new ways to extend their artistry. 'Lockdown Jams' on Zoom, Facebook, Youtube, Jamulus, Twitter and Instagram quickly became the 'in-thing'. Rock and roll dinosaurs or contemporary pop-stars or thousands of indie artists, producers, singers and DJs, all are reaching out to fans, via online jams and prepared broadcasts. One can pick and play thousands of real-time or virtual concerts fired up from bedrooms, studios, make-shift pads and basements across the world. Call it a paradigm shift of sorts or a temporary hiatus, the nature of performance is going through unforeseen changes. Covid19 impacted musicians if not the music per say. Yet this new norm is rapidly taking on a look-alike sound-alike aspect - a case with most online cultures based on technology (and not on authentic aptitude). A few exceptional cases and even fewer unique artist narratives appear in this Lockdown deluge. Standing out for it's ingenuity and imagination, is Bastard Assignment and their Lockdown Jams. Based in London, the collective is engaged in a range of disciplines which include composition, sound-art, theatre, dance and voice. The association obviously predates the current pandemic, five years in the making, Bastard Assignment has been hailed as "Some of London's most strange and absorbing night-outs" by Quietus. In such challenging times, the need to restructure and question thoughts, performance and output is important. Ideas which may create new paths (roles) for the artist in a multilayered society.
Bastard Assignments is an attempt to create an environment where art can escape identification. The term 'bastard' itself humorous (and derogatory) embodies the rebellious independent ethos of the collective. Founded by Timothy Cape, Edward Henderson, Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear, the four composer-performers stress on the 'essence of performance' - as a radical movement outside institutional shackles, manifesting as spontaneity coupled with anticipation. It does remind us of the cantankerous and progressive beginnings of the Dada movement, in France, Germany and Spain during the early twentieth century. Over a short period, Bastard Assignments has performed at numerous venues in London and the UK, eventually spilling over internationally in Copenhagen, Chicago and Paris last year. Addressing the global lockdown and the closure of venues, Bastard Assignments have been meeting via video conferencing software in a continued effort to create music and performance art. Recording and posting the outcomes by way of a new series called Lockdown Jams, these short and experimental 'encounters' allow the participants to share spontaneity, breath uncertainty and create new intersections across a range of disciplines. Honestly, it is difficult to describe in words, what this zany group of artists are doing at times. Best that you watch, listen and absorb these far-out assignments!
The founders of Bastard Assignments explain that the name goes back to their students days, referring to the pieces of coursework, that held up the real fun - making music. Since it's inception in 2015, Bastard Assignments has been featured in the Guardian, the Telegraph, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and The Wire magazine, as well as rave reviews by The Spectator, Quietus and the Evening Standard. Most of these mainstream culture outlets often shower praises yet fail to document the contemplation behind radical art and sound. “Works seamlessly blending aspects of stage, screen and sound - project a vision of the future where art escapes identification and subversive humour plays a key role in our survival” – Ilia Rogatchevski, The Wire. The collective has been described as "a Fluxus for the Facebook generation". One might be easily inclined to label all such non-mainstream efforts as marginal, yet we ask - at the margins of what? Or even if such chaste definitions actually matter anymore.
